Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[DasBroot]

This is the second time that you've mentioned suicidal thoughts in this thread. I don't want to offend you, but if you are having suicidal thoughts -- if that is in any remote way on your current list of options for dealing with any situation -- please seek out help.

 

Definitely agreed. Good hasn't abandoned the world.  Evil hasn't triumphed.  The Republicans saw a chance to take all three levels and took it - nothing more, nothing less.

 

Mr Trump will make America look like a buffoon, certainly, but we'll be just fine.

[Kaspar Hauser]

Thank you, and yes, I am seeking help. I’m getting counselling, I’m in regular contact with a very wise minister with the United Church of Canada, I’m meditating, I’m eating right, I don’t use any mind altering substances other than anti-depressant medications. I know that my despair is putting my life is in danger. The problem I’m facing is that I can no longer tell the difference between paranoid catastrophization and a realistic appraisal of our situation.

 

I honestly don’t think we’re going to be okay in any meaningful sense of the word. Even assuming that Trump and the Republicans don’t successfully impose such extensive voter suppression measures that it becomes impossible for the Democrats to ever win a majority in either the Congress or the Senate again, much less win the presidency, he will certainly use his time in office to inflict horrific violence both domestically and internationally.

 

Think about what would be entailed in rounding up and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants: the only way to do that would be by taking away every restraint upon police powers and creating sprawling concentration camps. Do you think those police powers will only be used against undocumented immigrants? What do you think will happen when an utterly unrestrained and malignantly empowered police state is turned against Muslims? Or Black Lives Matters protesters? Or Standing Rock water protectors? Or anyone who demonstrates against Trump’s government?

 

Think about what will happen to tens of millions of people who will lose their coverage under the Affordable Care Act, not to mention the many millions more whose lives will be at risk if the Republicans follow through on their plans to gut Social Security and Medicare. Think about what will happen to LGBTQ people when in the name of religious freedom it becomes perfectly legal to discriminate against same-sex couples. Think about the enraged followers of the Alt Right who have been empowered by this monster, and what they will now feel at completely liberty to inflict upon their scapegoats of choice, not only in the United States but around the world.

 

Remember that in 2008/2009 we came within a hair’s-breadth of a global economic depression. We were only saved by some very smart thinking by an intelligent Democratic president who acted in the face of concerted Republican opposition. Trump’s team is planning to dismantle the regulations erected to prevent such a disaster from recurring, and he’s appointing Goldman Sachs executives to his cabinet. How do you think things will play out if we face another global financial crisis under Trump’s watch?

 

And what happens when he launches his trade wars? I’m a Canadian. How well do you think our faltering economy is going to handle a trade war with a country ten times our size that accounts for well over 50% of our trade? What kind of concessions is he going to demand in order to avoid such a war? Is he going to insist that we tear up our socialized medicare system and open our borders to the American health insurers who are salivating at the thought of gaining access to our health care market? What effect do you think he’s having on our political landscape? Our official opposition, the Conservative Party, is on the cusp of an Alt Right transformation. With Trump in office and applying the thumbscrews to Canada’s economy, who do you think is going to win our next federal election, and what do you think the victor will do to labour rights and our social safety net?

 

Can you imagine the human devastation he will inflict upon Mexico as he takes aim at its entire economy? Moving beyond North America’s borders, how do you think China is going to respond if Trump tries to hurt them economically, or if he continues to prod them over Taiwan? The man sees the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims as his mortal enemies. What do you think is going to happen when terrorists start blowing up Trump Towers in order to provoke him into overreacting and thereby persuading Muslims throughout the world that radicalization is their only viable option for resisting American imperialism? In his security briefings he was reported to ask why he just couldn’t “nuke” his enemies. How long do you think it’s going to take for him to start a nuclear conflict with, I don’t know, North Korea?

 

What effects are this man’s policies going to have on the civilizational threat of climate change? Most of Canada is locked into a ferocious winter because an Arctic heat wave is forcing a cold air mass south. My home town is suffering one snow squall after the next. In the summers we’re facing wildfires that are threatening entire cities. How long can our economy endure these climate-mediated stresses?

 

They say that character is destiny. America has elected a psychopathic and impulse-driven kleptocrat, a man who has been credibly accused not only of rape but of child rape, a man who has a history of mob connections, who’s spoken highly of the Philippines’ Duterte and Russia’s Putin, who’s unrestrained by either a Democratic Congress or Senate, who gets to not only fill the next Supreme Court vacancy but make somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100 judicial appointments, and who inherits control of the most expansive surveillance state apparatus on Earth. What kind of destiny do you think this American president has in store for the world?

 

Even assuming that a miracle happens and a Democrat wins the next presidential election, do you think this man—this man—will ever concede that he lost an election to anybody, or allow for a peaceful transition of power?

 

The dangers I’ve listed are only the most obvious ones, the ones that are so blatant you can’t ignore them. But as we all know, what’s obvious is never more than the tip of the iceberg. What threats are below the surface, the ones that won’t become apparent for a year? Or two? Or eight? Assuming Trump isn’t made El Presidente for life, what damage has he already inflicted upon American democratic traditions? Even before he takes office, Trump is making me pine for the George W. regime. Who the hell succeeds Trump as the next Republican president?

 

I’m a superhero RPG nerd who just turned 50, and since the election I can’t imagine a future in which I will have any economic or even physical security. My spouse and I don’t have kids, and we don’t have family we can rely on for support. We work in the social services field: how secure do you think our jobs will be if Trump’s actions send Canada into a severe and prolonged recession?

 

But it’s not just Trump. Slowing economic growth rates and rising economic inequality, the impact of automation on workforces around the world, mass dislocation of populations due to war and flooding and desertification, and spreading geopolitical conflicts are exactly the conditions in which right-wing authoritarianism flourishes and democracies wither. That’s why we’re seeing far right parties rising fast throughout Europe.

 

Yes, when trying to imagine our future I’m tempted by the thought of self-annihilation, and so is my wife. I don’t think we’re unusual in that. I don’t want to take my own life, but I can’t get the idea out of my mind because I can’t get the implications of Trump’s character, power, and stated agendas out of my mind. Evil may not have had a final victory, but It has had an overwhelming victory that the West may not be able to recover from. This man makes Nixon, Reagan, and George W. look angelic by comparison. While counselling is useful, the truth is that my counsellors are all exposed to the exact same disaster I’m reeling from, and, like me, none of them have ever lived through anything like this: there is no one outside of this burning box to seek an objective point of view from. All we have is guesswork, and our guesswork is based on First World assumptions that don’t look terribly credible anymore. Looking at the Trump regime, I’m reminded far more of Latin American terror states than anything we’ve ever seen in America since the 19^th Century.

 

If I’m wrong in my assumptions I would dearly, dearly love for someone to demonstrate my errors to me. I desperately want to be grossly mistaken, but at this point I don’t see how I can be.

 

When I said that I was wrestling with an angel I meant it. I have never in my life felt such horror, and I don’t see any end to it.

[TheDarkness]

Kaspar, this is what I was talking about earlier in reference to fear.

 

It is not a steering wheel, it is an engine. Letting it guide is often disastrous, it is exactly what Trump needed his voters to do, fear, Islam is coming, war on Christmas, Mexicans, the MSM, fear fear fear.

 

The rational response is not more of the same.

 

Assess what is productive to oppose, do not obsess over what MIGHT be the future because of what is now:

 

Knowing what you don't care for now, seek useful ways to make yourself count. BUT, have a life as well. Everybody gets one.

 

History as we read it is not history as it was. Vast swathes of humanity, the vast majority, are not written into the histories we have, and we gain the illusion that leaders had more power than they truly did, were not themselves hemmed in by other influences, were not themselves hemmed in by their own actions or the image they must sell.

 

History occurs in the cracks as well as the heights. Don't become too fearful of what happens at the heights. It is very hard to see what is happening in the cracks from the heights. The great powers often have so little influence over ordinary life that they could honestly be said to have never existed for such people.

 

It is important to keep in mind that Buddhism became one of the most influential schools of thought in China not because of its temples, but because every attempt to surpress it took away those temples, took its worship out of the temples and hid it among the people, until it became so intertwined with the culture that it was impossible to separate from the culture.

 

Yes, there are bad things that have occured for many recently. But, those bad things are themselves working against the very culture that espoused them. That kind of thing does not often succeed. Usually, it ends badly for those seeking it.

[TheDarkness]

If I’m wrong in my assumptions I would dearly, dearly love for someone to demonstrate my errors to me. I desperately want to be grossly mistaken, but at this point I don’t see how I can be.

The error is that you are assuming that your vision of the future is what will be.

 

Your error is that, even in a bad future, your life will not have good.

 

Everyone is selling fear. Don't buy it. No one can sell you the future. No one can package it and define it, and correct predictions usually are, at best, partially correct, or extremely narrow in what they predicted.

 

There is a world to live in now. It makes no sense to not live in it over the specter of what future might be, but isn't.

[Badger]

I don't envy you that discussion, Old Man.

 

Michelle Obama was right: a lot of people are learning what it feels like to lose hope.

 

As bad as things got, I never expected to see this kind of gutter fascism, complete with all of its brain dead conspiracy theories, ascend to the highest positions of power in the world. It's as though that world is rubbing my face in the innocence of my hipster pessimism.

 

God, was this what it was like watching the fascists rise to power in the 30s? Were people as gobsmacked by the titanic stupidity of fascist ideologies? Were they just as certain that these imbeciles would self-destruct or be taken down by sensible adults before they could do real harm?

 

Confronted by such monstrous and predatory foolishness, were they tempted by suicide?

 

Are such suicidal thoughts signs of pathology, rationality, or complicity with fascism's nihilistic ethos? Is the loss of hope not just an injury but also a choice? If everyone despaired as I'm despairing, wouldn't that eliminate whatever redemptive possibility this catastrophe might still offer? Wouldn't that be a betrayal of everyone and everything we love?

 

But what on Earth can we reasonably hope for in this dawning age? The world we grew up in and loved is gone and it isn't coming back. What if we simply don't have the means to make our way in this new world? How do we choose to hope when nothing we want to hope for seems possible? What if the redemptive possibilities offered by our situation are simply too meagre to sustain our sanity? What did compassionate and rational Germans hope for in 1933?

 

Where is the free world that stands opposed to fascism in 2017?

 

I have been insulated by crumbling bourgeois illusions for a very long time. The impoverished in our countries have been struggling against these exact terrors for much longer. I've known too many people who, in the grip of well-earned despair, have either attempted or completed suicide. The economy has been grinding lives into mush for decades.

 

This must be what it's like to wrestle with an angel. No one told me that angels are so terrifying, or reminded me that in such contests they almost always win.

 

Well, being a conservative, I lost hope back in 08, so I am 8 years ahead of the curve.  And Clinton vs. Trump was such a worthless pair, it basically went worse. And I keep surviving, if this advice helps (hopefully)  I went cynical on politics and went more and more to occupying my time with anything but politics.  Sometimes it is best to take a step away for awhile if possible.

 

ANd I did find Obama at least tolerable (except for foreign policy) enough to get through it.  (though I didn't get a better option in 2016)

[Michael Hopcroft]

Kaspar, I have some idea what you're going through. At times I go through it myself. I am not going to deny or belittle your fears, because in many ways they are my fears as well.

 

Sometimes faith offers answers, but that can be difficult as it is your faith (and,m in a way, the faith of all of us) that is being tried right now. Fortunately we have other sources of solace. Art, for example. I think about the humanizing experiences of art all the time, and I've turned to many examples of art where corageous people and characters face many demons, especially their own.

 

I think of Don Camillo and Peppone. I think of David Bowie fleeing Hollywood for Berlin to rediscover his own humanity. I think of the wonders and terrors of Miyazaki's films and the courage of animators like Rebecca Sugar. I think about Mel Brooks using comedy to skewer racism and Anti-Semitism, and of the Marx Brothers riffing hilariously on the inanity of power in times eerily similar to our own. I think of Dave Grohl on the first Foo Fighters album and his electrifying rejection of the nihilism that destroyed his bandmate and friend Kurt Cobain, I think of Beethoven celebrating the joys of peace while his country's armies were getting crushed by Napoleon. I think of Van Gogh reaching out from the depths of encroaching madness to show us the world that only he saw. I think of the struggles of Teyve facing a world he no longer understood. I think of the banal evil of Jerry Lundegaard and the compassion and courage of Marge Gunderson.

 

Our courage is going to be tested in ways it has never been tested before, but we have examples, both from art and from history of people who stood up and said no. People who refused to give in to the temptation to hate,m and the equally strong temptation to cower in fear and do nothing. There is the possibility that I will be hurt in ways I can barely imagine, but I refuse to believe that I am helpless against fate. I refuse to believe that I am a pawn blindly marching forward to my own destruction.

 

This post, of course, does not solve anything for you. Your struggle is yours, your decisions are yours, your fears are real and palpable. I am not going to stand by helpless, though. I will put in the effort to reach out to people I don't know at all and tell them the same thing I am telling you: take courage. Take courage wherever you can find it, because we all need it now. 

[DasBroot]

Four words that have served me very well my entire adult life:

 

"This, too, shall pass."

 

The future isn't set in stone. Predictions aren't guarantees (just look at the polls leading to the election for evidence of that).  There's any number of ways this can all play out:  He's a 70 year old man - who says he lives his entire term?.  He could get impeached for trying to fulfil a few of his campaign promises.  He could simply walk away from most of them (which he's already doing.)

 

Be vigilant not fearful.

[megaplayboy]

I for one look forward to the Inaugurpeachment.

[Joe Walsh]

I for one look forward to the Inaugurpeachment.

 

We had an all-hands lunch at work today, and the rumors were flying about anarchists planning to be there to disrupt the proceedings, biker gangs planning to protect Trump, etc.

[Old Man]

God, I hope so.  Beats the hell out of watching liberty die in silence and bitter cold.

[DasBroot]

Better (in a worse way) men than he have tried to kill liberty. It would be a cosmic irony if he did it by accident but let's be serious - Deadpool and Wolverine have nothing on liberty's regeneration factor.

[Old Man]

[megaplayboy]

Four words that have served me very well my entire adult life:

 

"This, too, shall pass."

 

The future isn't set in stone. Predictions aren't guarantees (just look at the polls leading to the election for evidence of that).  There's any number of ways this can all play out:  He's a 70 year old man - who says he lives his entire term?.  He could get impeached for trying to fulfil a few of his campaign promises.  He could simply walk away from most of them (which he's already doing.)

 

Be vigilant not fearful.

The price of liberty. The Republic is resilient, but only because good citizens are willing to defend it against all enemies, foreign AND domestic.

[womble]

How do you go about doing that? 

"I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain."  

 

Frank Herbert. Dune.

[Lawnmower Boy]

So. . . And I don 't want to be speaking out of turn, or sound, you know, greedy or anything, BUT, once your country has blown up and you're not using it anymore, can I have your space programme?

[Hermit]

 I don't see why not, we haven't really used it in decades. *Wry*

[kukuli]

So. . . And I don 't want to be speaking out of turn, or sound, you know, greedy or anything, BUT, once your country has blown up and you're not using it anymore, can I have your space programme?

 

No, the survivers will be using it.

[Lawnmower Boy]

No, the survivers will be using it.

 

AWWW. I was going to ask for the UK's space programme, but, pff, who wants it, anyway? (No offence, England dudes, but you went with all those pan-European multinational projects, and look where that got you.)

 

Okay, new deal. HOw about, oh, say, twenty percent of Washington state, and I'll say something nice at the service --maybe even cry. It's not even one of your cool states!

 

. . . Also, Sussex, or Surrey, or one of those other counties that starts with "S." Except Sunderland.

[Old Man]

FBI Director Comey knew the Russians were hacking the DNC months before the election, sort of neglected to tell them

[Badger]

God, I hope so.  Beats the hell out of watching liberty die in silence and bitter cold.

 

I don't know, sounds more like "saving" liberty by killing it.  (though, I have a tendency to equate anarchist with violence, if peaceful protest I am ok with that)

 

I might not like Trump, but he did legitimately win (barring evidence of Russia hacking the voting machines)

[Badger]

FBI Director Comey knew the Russians were hacking the DNC months before the election, sort of neglected to tell them

 

That dude is all over the map.  The only thing consistent about him is incompetence.

 

Edit: He is U.S. Intelligence's answer to Sgt. Schultz, apparently

[Old Man]

Hired by Republican opponents of Trump, MI6 agent frustrated by FBI refusal to act on evidence of Trump collusion with Russia

[Kaspar Hauser]

The press conference was part of a strategy: http://www.alternet.org/media/welcome-era-bs-message-my-doomed-colleagues-american-media-russian-journalist#.WHmiSFNz2ZM.facebook

[death tribble]

. . . Also, Sussex, or Surrey, or one of those other counties that starts with "S." Except Sunderland.

Sunderland is a city. Staffordshire, Somerset, Shropshire and Suffolk are the other S counties.

[Kaspar Hauser]

Thank you, everyone, for your words of encouragement.

 

I think I have the same challenge ahead of me that we all face: we have to find ways of valuing life in the face of a coalescing societal order that is contemptuous of our lives. Trump and his power elite see us as little more than roaches to be ground under heel, and now--"checks and balances" platitudes notwithstanding--they have all the power they need to grind us into the filth. Our culture tragically shares this vision of life. Our entertainment media is saturated with a kind of death porn that proclaims that only heroic lives are worth paying attention to, and only then so long as they continue to fascinate. Collectively, we have lost faith in the idea that even humiliated lives have dignity and significance: we see each other as disposable commodities, and so we ultimately see ourselves that way, too.

 

Every time we turn away from people who plead for help and dignity--and, God help me, I have turned away from many--we slander sentient life itself, and rob ourselves of any sense of entitlement to help and dignity. I am tempted by self-destruction not only because I am afraid of the colossal and unexpected evil of Neo-fascism, but because I have too little faith in the value of life. I have throughout my life struggled against an inner nihilism, an abjectly desacralized vision of existence. I have wrested little sparks of sanctity from that unholy vista, but only with monumental effort. Now I face a future in which the social order is going to exponentially accelerate its efforts to drown the working class in self-contempt, hatred, and fear. Those of us who are white and who have not yet been condemned to the horrors of the deindustrialized rust belt are going to get a taste--we're going to get ever-larger mouthfuls--of the humiliations inflicted for centuries upon people of colour. I have precious little reason to believe that my vision of the good is sturdy enough to support that weight for very long.

 

I may very well ultimately lose this fight against moral despair. If I was placing bets, I wouldn't wager much on my long-term prospects. But the value of the struggle for each of us may lie not in whether we lose but rather in how long we hold out, how long we continue reaching out for those sparks.

 

There was an existentialist vampire movie called "The Addiction" that came out in the 90s, and there was a line in it that's stayed with me. It goes something like this: "Our propensity for evil lies in our weakness before it." It is our vulnerability in the face of monstrous and malevolent power to succumbing to moral horror and its desacralized vision of life that opens us up to infection by that malevolence. Cruelty inflicted or witnessed tempts us with nihilism, and nihilism tempts us to hate life, regardless of whether that life resides elsewhere or within our own breast. That's the price of turning refugees away: by radically devaluing their lives, we radically devalue our own. If they don't deserve love, then neither do we. The lynch mob ultimately hangs its own humanity.

 

I think that's what I've done to myself. By abandoning someone in need when I felt overwhelmed by that person's demands, I abandoned myself, I corrupted myself. I am, I think, damned, and I don't know how to find redemption. My cowardice is born of shame.

 

We are going to be terribly tempted, because this horror isn't going anywhere. The timeline is not going to reset, he's not going to be impeached, his power is just going to grow until something catastrophic happens. The disease is too far advanced.

 

He is clearly making China his regime's official enemy, so we can expect war, emergency measures acts to eliminate dissidents, the draft, the further militarization of the economy, and, I fear, nuclear confrontation. The characters of the men in this regime show no signs of wisdom, virtue, or restraint, and they are threatening what China rightfully sees as its non-negotiable vital interests.

 

Love has to be strong now. I don't mean the saccharine love that Clinton spouted, I mean the real deal, I mean agape in its deepest sense. Love does not trump hate, but it can endure and eventually weaken hate if it has time enough to work. We may not have that long: the fire next time may well be the fire within a year or two. But whatever our moral measure, the call of love is insistent and it remains so until death claims us as individuals and communities.

 

I honestly want to answer that call, but I have to drag myself through my own sewer to do so, and the undertow is very strong.